In 2016, search engine optimisation is crucial to help your business be found online. But unless you’re an expert in the subject, it may be difficult to determine just what factors into your website ranking highly on Google and Bing searches.
Technical issues, for example, matter as much as the actual content on your site in determining whether a search engine deems your site valuable, relevant, and high-quality.
So if you’re asking yourself, does my website hosting effect my SEO? The answer is yes, in more ways than one.
3 Ways in Which Your Business Website Hosting Effects SEO
1) Website Speed
The speed at which your individual pages load has a significant effect on both your site’s usability and its SEO. Search algorithms rank slower websites as less desirable, simply because they’re not as user friendly. And while a variety of factors play into your website loading speed, your host is a significant contributing factor.
Think about it in simple terms: everything on your website from images and content to the code, is stored on a server provided by your host. The longer it takes for your users to retrieve that information (i.e. to view your site), the slower it makes your website. These differences may seem minuscule, but play a significant part in how many of your visitors bounce before the site ever loads.
Bounce rate and loading speed rates, of course, are both major factors in how search engines like Google rank websites. So if you don’t have the right host, and your load times are longer, you may not get the SEO benefits you desire.
2) Reliability
Even the fastest server matters little if it’s down on a regular basis. Again, Google takes reliability into consideration when crawling and evaluating individual websites and their pages. If it deems your site to be unreliable, your rankings will drop.
What makes a website reliable? Of course, you should shoot for your site being up 100% of the time, but even the best servers may fall victim to unexpected errors. No server will be able to provide flawless reliability, but even a website with 99% reliability will be down for almost 4 days in the course of a year.
A host that gets you at least 99.9% expected uptime should be your goal. Finding such a host will allow you to rest easy both that you will be found easily reliably, and that your search engine rankings do not suffer.
3) Credibility
Another potential SEO problem occurs when the host you share with others is does not discriminate between the types of content that live on its servers. That server will be directly responsible for your website’s security, and a non-picky host increases the chance that your website shares space with shady websites or content.
Search engines like Google know that as well as you do, and will downgrade websites that live on host with unreliable security measures. When choosing your web host, be sure you pick one that knows which types of content exist on its servers, and how well they are protected from potential breaches.
Picking your host is crucial for both your website’s usability and its search engine optimisation. And truly, both of these concepts are more closely related than you might think. Search engines like Google design their algorithm specifically to show users the most relevant, reliable, and credible content possible. If your host does not abide by all of these guidelines, you will be downgraded and your organic search traffic will suffer.
If, on the other hand, you find a host that can help you achieve these goals, your search rankings will thank you for it.
Contact us to get on the path of good, SEO-friendly hosting!
Further Information
Being Authentic In Business And Why It’s Critical To Your Website
How to Optimise Your On-Page Content Using The Yoast Plugin
7 Top Ways E-Commerce is Changing for Business
How to Set Up A YouTube Channel For Your Business
Why Google My Business Reviews are Important and How To Ask For One
